U.S. supports Israel segregation

It is unclear why The Journal News would publish an article that is so irrelevant to the local community.

More apropos during the Christmas season in Westchester would have been an informative article about how the Israeli government has turned the birthplace of Jesus Christ into an open air prison for tens of thousands of Christians whose existence in Bethlehem goes back centuries.

Israel's 30-foot-high concrete and barbed-wire apartheid wall has sealed off the town of Bethlehem from Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem and served to absorb Israel's illegal, Jews-only settlements, like Gilo and Har Homa.

Having seen these abominations in person recently, this observer is appalled that our government, which claims to support freedom and democracy, continues to fund Israeli apartheid to the tune of 5 billion American taxpayer dollars annually.

Incredibly, we are paying for the construction of segregated housing - something illegal in the United States.

As for Arabs serving in the Israeli army, this reflects the failure of the Zionist project in Palestine. The so-called "Jewish state" never was and never will be, notwithstanding decades of expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of indigenous Arabs.

Moreover, the presence of over 200 Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem has ironically made the establishment of a separate Palestinian state impossible while ensuring the inevitability of a single multi-ethnic state in which Arabs will have to struggle for their civil rights.